A scholarly attempt
"a scholarly attempt" is the the third article written by John Bellairs and the fifth article overall to appear during the 1958-59 school year for "Escape", the weekly humor column that appeared in the Scholastic, the official student publication of the University of Notre DameNotre Dame Scholastic, Vol. 100, No. 05 -- October 31, 1958. Synopsis * Read "a scholarly attempt" Commentary There's not too much that really needs explanation here as it's a good example of Bellairs making something out of nothing. Architecturally the buildings in the sophomore quadrangle were built in a style officially labeled Tudor Gothic, explains Bowen: "In fact this was the label applied to most of the buildings constructed on the campus between the twenties and the early fifties such as O'Shaughnessy Hall, the Liberal and Fine Arts building, where English majors like John and I had most of our classes. Two new dormitories built at around the same time were in a style that might be called Squarish Moderne. Anyway, John was accurate in labeling the sophomore quad Early Football Grandeur, in that the prewar building boom was nourished by the University's new cash cow.Correspondence with Charles Bowen." Myers confirms Bellairs is fairly accurate in that they were constructed in the 1920s and 1930s and that his description of Tudor Gothic is not too far off the mark: "They were your standard ivy-covered stone collegiate buildings of the period.Correspondence with Alfred Myers." For those interested in campus history, Myers says Badin Hall is indeed one of the oldest on campus, dating back to the 19th century: "It is rather nondescript and boxy. As I remember it had an exterior porch supported by iron pillars, much like the architecture in the French Quarter of New Orleans, but without the filigreed iron work or the charm. It truly had no main entrance, just a couple of nondescript doors on various sides of the building." Morrissey, Lyons, and Howard halls truly did form a quadrangle, with the fourth side opening onto the main quadrangle that forms the east-west axis of the campus: "During our era, these were all sophomore residence halls, and there was a definite pecking order among them. Lyons Hall, with a picturesque archway cutting through the building and a fine view of Saint Mary's lake in in side, was by far the most desirable. As students chose their rooms each year in order of grade point average, those in Lyons were generally snapped up first. Howard, at the opposite end from Lyons, was somewhere in the middle, though it had some truly excellent rooms. Morrissey, the hall in the middle, was the least desirable, and it tended to be regarded as a hall for jocks (but the actual scholarship athletes were spread more or less evenly throughout all the residence halls with no separation whatever from the rest of the student body). It should be noted that both Bellairs and I lived in Howard Hall during the 1956-57 year, I and my roommate in an excellent room having three-way ventilation (it was in a wing of the building) and John in a single room. Bellairs' comment about residents sending him a postcard evoked a response from the columnist in his November 14 column." Dillon Hall was indeed very big and alleged to be airless, says Bowen: "John suggested that its architecture was imitation Ivy League, which is a fair enough criticism of all Notre Dame's Tudor Gothic buildings, but Harvard was the wrong choice. Yale went for Gothic, but Harvard went for Georgian. Of course John, not having been out of the Midwest, didn't know this, although we eastern sophisticates were always willing to set him and other rubes straight." Bowen points out the the Huddle was the name of the student snack bar: "When we arrived on campus in 1955, the University had recently opened a new student center that included a much larger and more up-to-date Huddle, but the original one was kept open and renamed 'The Old Huddle.' It occupied a small, square, rather squalid-looking brick building. Many of the oldest buildings on campus seemed to have been made of a form of brick that deteriorated over time, the original yellow becoming blacker and blacker until they wound up somewhere between battleship gray and olive drab - a fairly depressing prospect." Myers adds the greatly expanded but ghastly food court is occupied by all the usual culprits of fast food chains. LOBUND refers to Laboratory of Biology, University of Notre Dame: "which has been quite celebrated since the 1930s for its research on raising animals in germ-free environments. The Biology Building, dating back to about the turn of the century, was physically attached to one of the then-newest buildings on campus, the Nieuland Hall of Science. Washington Hall was (and is) the campus's main auditorium and the location of the College Quiz Bowl when it came to South Bend." The nickname "Professor McTrash" is a Bellairsian dig at one of the most celebrated Notre Dame professors of that era, Croatian sculptor Ivan Meštrović, who had begun teaching at the university in 1955. During Bellairs' time on campus, the Architecture Building was indeed cleared of its ivy cover, and this process did reveal a sign saying Hoynes College of Law. "That's as far as the facts go, of course," says Bowen, "and John took off from there. Hoynes was one of the University's first law professors. When the Law School moved into bigger quarters the name did not move with it, so the sign surprised everyone. In comparing the building to the police station of Taunton, Massachusetts, John may have been twitting me; that is the city where my high school was located." "Bellairs' reference to a Notre Dame-Harvard rivalry is pure fantasy," Myers adds, "as we had no relations whatever with Harvard, which in fact snubbed an offer to schedule them for football in the early 1920s." References Category:University of Notre Dame Category:Scholastic articles [[Category:Escape article